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Without going into specific details, there is a nagging issue that
occupies a large space in my mind. This issue through a variety of experiences
and observations has been present in my thinking since my childhood and has
recently come to the front burner, so to speak, in a way that I could never
have imagined. First, let me describe the honor that has been bestowed upon me
by a small, elite group of people, the Detroit Public Schools Board of
Education, who have been elected by the citizens of Detroit for the purpose of
providing all Detroit schoolchildren the free public education mandated by the
Michigan Constitution. The ‘honor’ is that I have been selected by the Board to
represent the 58,000 children of the school district to restore some semblance
of sanity to a system that has been run aground by our Michigan state officials
and the recent emergency managers since the state took control of the school
district in 1999. In a subsequent blog I will describe what my personal ‘issue’
is as well as the plan to change the downward spiral of the DPS. But first,
there is some extremely important background information that must be presented
to place the current dilemma in appropriate context.
At the time of the initial takeover, the school district had a
$93 million budgetary surplus, a large chunk remaining of a $1.5 billion bond
approved by Detroit voters in 1994 for providing necessary repairs, renovations
of district schools and new school buildings. There were 178,000 children in
the district at that time and the district was acknowledged to be the
best-performing school district in the country of districts containing over
100,000 students. To make a long story short, the state now manages a school
district of some 58,000 children more or less, that is considered to be the
worst in the country where it counts, i.e., education performance, and has a
half billion-dollar deficit. The damage done to individual children of the
district is the incalculable loss of life opportunities that an adequate education
would and should have been provided. The damage done to Detroit schoolchildren
is the equivalent of the Flint water crisis on steroids.
Who does the Michigan legislature and governor blame for this fiasco? The local publically-elected school board, of
course. The reality is the school board and local officials bear no responsibility
for this current fiasco. Gov. Snyder’s standard response for Republican-created
disasters, such as the instant situation and the Flint lead-poisoning crisis,
is to lay the blame on someone else, particularly the locals. Politicians find
that when they’re sniffing around for votes, it plays very well in the suburbs
and western Michigan to blame the current on the fine people of Detroit. It’s
all part of the welfare myth that serves as the basic credo of a certain political
party. The rubric goes like this; All black and poor people want welfare so they
don’t have to work while hard-working others have to pay. In actual fact, the welfare
queens of American are big businesses; State and local governments annually award
at least $110 billion in taxpayer subsidies to business, with 3 of every 4
dollars going to fewer than 1,000 big corporations, Add the federal contribution
and the combined cost of these corporate welfare programs is $1.539 trillion
per year. The three main programs needy families depend upon — Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families ($17.3 billion), food stamps ($74 billion), and the Earned Income Tax Credit ($67.2 billion) — cost $158.5 billion in total. This means we spend ten
times as much on corporate welfare and handouts than we do on welfare
for working families struggling to make ends meet.
Stay
tuned for the next blog. Just saying . .
.